I shall begin with the assertion that, in Mikhail Bakhtin's
treatment of it, dialogism has no boundaries: "Life is by its very
nature dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to question,
to attempt to comprehend, to respond, to agree, and so forth. In this
dialogue, man (1) participates in his entirety and with his entire life:
with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, his entire body, his actions.
He puts himself into word, (2) and this word enters into the dialogic
tissue of human life, into the world symposium." (3) In the context
of the cited quotation it follows that not only does word enter into the
dialogic tissue of human life, but so also do movements, actions,
behaviors, images and ideas, and emotions, which possess an biodynamic,
sensitive and affective tissue. In actual fact dialogic tissue is not
only verbal, it also characterizes all forms of behavior, activity, and
consciousness. In accordance with Ernst Cassirer's assertion made
some time ago, it is not only material but also idea which possesses
sensitivity; however, in the case of an idea this sensitivity is of a
symbolic significance. This significance in turn arises only on
interindividual territory.

Bakhtin stresses that unfinalizable dialogue is the only adequate
form of verbal expression of authentic human life. It can be termed not
only unfinalizable, but also the original form of human life. As a
representative of the human genus, an infant is deprived of some
instincts and reflexes, but is on the other hand endowed with a direct
intelligible intuition, a capacity for comprehending the meaning
implicit in existence. "It is not just the fact of comprehension of
speech," wrote Gustav Shpet, "but to a still greater extent
the fact of comprehending within the bounds of the genus, right down to
its most undefined forms, such as mechanical imitation, sympathy,
empathy and so on, are only manifestations of this single entity, on
which every kind of social life is conditional, of
'comprehension' as a function of reason." Similar ideas
were expressed by Saint Augustine of Hippo, Alexei Ukhtomsky, Martin
Heidegger, Vladimir Bibikhin and, of course, Mikhail Bakhtin.

The unlimited nature of the problematics of dialogue does not
preclude dialogue to be on the boundaries of other fundamental problems
of humanitarian knowledge, in particular, psychology. For this
problematics, the three oppositions discussed by Bakhtin are important:
ontologism vs gnoseologism, (4) ialogism vs monologism, and polyphony vs
homophony. Together they allow one to examine consciousness and psyche
as objective phenomena (social events) in the composition of the
universe. Such a view does not deprive them of the status of
subjectivity, but broadens the concept of the objective at the expense
of the inclusion of the subjective in it. In real life acts of
subjectivisation of the objective and objectivisation of the subjective
continually alternate, which sweeps away (defuse) the clear-cut
boundaries between the objective and the subjective, and makes
distinctions between them extremely relative. Similar contradictory
directed acts are observed in dialogue, where the interpretation (and
reinterpretation) of significance and the designation (and
re-designation) of meanings endlessly alternate. Between acts of
objectivisation and subjectivisation, just as between acts of
comprehending and designating meaning, there are gaps, lacunas, zones of
indeterminacy, deltas of non-understanding, and a surplus of freedom of
interpretation etc. Such gaps in the continuing experience provide a
place for creativity, for creative comprehension and, it goes without
saying, for delusion and error. This leads to unfinalizability of
dialogue, of course, if a person "develops thought via
thought" (Alexander Pushkin (5)). The postulation on the
alternation of contradictorily directed acts has an important
consequence: the objectivity of the subjective is implicit within it and
does not require any proofs lying beyond its bounds, for example, proofs
"from the brain," which are insistently and importunately
imposed on psychology by neurophysiology. Psychology itself is an
objective science concerned with the objective world of humans (and
animals). The psyche is in itself a factor of the evolution--a moving
force of human history--because the three colors of time: the past, the
present and the future are only given to consciousness and the psyche.
Man himself creates organs by his soul and consciousness (Fichte).

The three sins--namely, gnoseologism, monologism and homophony--are
shared by the science of the humanities as a whole. The existential
nature of the consciousness, its non-alibi in being, was seen by Bakhtin
in its active ethical orientation, in its deed (postupok). (6) He
constantly spoke of deed-making, postupok-making thinking and
consciousness. According to Bakhtin, consciousness is not an external
force with respect to action and deed (postupok), but rather it is
present within them in a concentrated form. In psychological language
this can be expressed as follows: not perception (memory, thinking,
etc.) and action, not perception as (or as if) action, but perception
and action as a single entity (cf. Descartes: action and passion are
one). Bakhtin regarded the sensation of its own activism as the most
important property of action, i.e. not only its sensitivity to
environment but also its sensitivity to its own fulfillment. This means
that action contains the necessary and sufficient foundations of
rudimentary (background) reflection, which is not only a post and
pre-scriptum to action, but accompanies it also in the course of
realization. This means that action is a completely valid psychic act;
it is heterogeneous and hetero-structural. Represented in it are the
main attributes of the soul: cognition, feeling and will. All psychic
acts are hetero-structural, even including consciousness. Not
consciousness and being, but, as Merab Mamardashvili (7) expressed it, a
single continuum of being-consciousness. Thus, Bakhtin overcame in his
own way the dichotomy between external and internal, distinguishing
forms of external and internal being, and the latter's external and
internal corporeal body. The internal corporeal body may take the form
of the soul, a form of consciousness. In my view, for the study and
description of psychological reality, including understanding the
dialogism of human life, the concepts of external and internal form are
very heuristic. According to Shpet, the internal form is a path, which
presupposes its externalization. According to Bakhtin the path of
accomplishment of action or deed (postupok) is purely internal, and the
continuity of this path is also purely internal.

What has been said about the external and internal forms has a
direct relationship to dialogism, to its psychological and pedagogical
meaning. We should not be led astray by the apparent simplicity of the
external form of dialogue-dispute-agreement. Inside of dialogue there is
nor just listening, but listening into the words of the other,
comprehending, empathizing, putting oneself in another's place,
pondering, seeking arguments and counterarguments. Given these
conditions, if we are lucky, an "unprecedented simplicity" may
be achieved. Whether they wish it or not, the participants in a widely
understood dialogue penetrate in the course of its realization into one
another's internal forms and, by this very fact, construct and
enrich their own internal forms. This does not occur with apprehension
of works of art and living texts. We should not be led astray by the
absence of apparent (audible) dialogue. As Boris Pasternak (8) wrote:
"The more reserved a productive individuality is, the more
collective, without any allegory, its narrative tends to be."
Instead of the phrase "the more collective," Bakhtin would
have said: "the more polyphonic" its narrative tends to be. It
is not for nothing that Pasternak is quoted. Bakhtin may be fully
characterized as a meta-psychologist. Creative literature served as
experimental material for him. The dialogic field of psychology still
remains to be ploughed. It would be good if representatives of other
professions set about this difficult task. Confrontation is simpler than
dialogue. The difference, it would appear, is trivial but extremely
portentous: word upon word--dialogue arousing consciousness, or, word
against word--confrontation arousing animal instincts. The problem is
that, in order to choose consciousness as both a goal and a means, one
must already possess it. But most unfortunately no "too much"
of consciousness has yet been observed in humanity as it sails into the
unpredictable future on a Para-Noahic Ark.

VLADIMIR P. ZINCHENKO

Higher School of Economics, National Research University, Moscow

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1.) Russian word "chelovek" used by Bakhtin is not
sexist as it is in English. In Russian, male pronouns refer to one of
the 3 genders of Russian nouns (e.g., the noun "chelovek" has
male gender) and not to the gender of the referred people.